Macron: Tweeting is ‘not compatible’ with being president
French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to take a swipe at President Trump’s Twitter habits, saying in a recent interview that tweeting is “not compatible” with the responsibilities of being president.
In an interview with Time magazine published Thursday, Macron said that while he’s heard much about Trump’s infamous tweets, he does not tweet very much himself.
“It’s not compatible with the kind of distance you need to govern and to preside,” Macron said. “To be president, you need some distance from events, from the permanent flows of news and reactions.”
{mosads}Trump has used his personal Twitter throughout his campaign and presidency to respond to news reports, promote his policies and share his unfiltered thoughts on current events.
He has also used it to trade personal insults with lawmakers and other world leaders, to make controversial claims and to comment on federal investigations, actions that have reportedly prompted his staff to stage an “intervention” about his use of the social media platform.
Macron told Time that he does not keep up regularly with Trump’s account and that as a president, one should not “react permanently” to things on social media.
“When you look at Twitter, when you look at reactions of people, you get something from the reality and from the perception of your people and people all around the place,” he said. “But I think that when you are in the situation to decide on your own and when you have the responsibility of lot of big policies and a lot of people, you cannot react permanently on this kind of media or on any media.”
The French president has 2.29 million followers on Twitter and has tweeted about 5,000 times, primarily videos and images from his events and duties as president. Trump has several times each of those numbers, with 42.4 million followers and 36,400 tweets.
“Twitter is not always totally adapted to this kind of job. It’s fine for your private life, but the problem is you don’t have any more private life when you’re president,” Macron added.
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